Shared Governance
in Colleges and
Universities
A Statement by the
Higher Education
Program and
Policy Council
A Union of Professionals
AFT Higher Education
A Union of Professionals
AFT Higher Education
SANDRA FELDMAN, President
EDWARD J. McELROY, Secretary-Treasurer
NAT LaCOUR, Executive Vice President
HIGHER EDUCATION PROGRAM AND POLICY COUNCIL:
Chair: WILLIAM E. SCHEUERMAN, AFT Vice President, United University Professions, State University of New York
Vice Chair: NORMAN SWENSON, AFT Vice President, Cook County College Teachers Union
BARBARA BOWEN, AFT Vice President, Professional Staff Congress, City University of New York
MAUREEN DINNEN, AFT Vice President, Florida Education Association United
JASON BLANK, Rhode Island College Chapter/AFT
DANIEL GEORGIANNA, University of Massachusetts Faculty Federation
MARTIN HITTELMAN, California Federation of Teachers Community College Council
ARTHUR HOCHNER, Temple Association of University Professionals
DONNA HURTADO, Albuquerque Technical-Vocational Institute Faculty Federation
JOHN MCDONALD, Henry Ford Community College Federation of Teachers
MARTHA MOCK, Teaching Assistants’ Association, University of Wisconsin-Madison
MARK RICHARD, United Faculty of Miami-Dade Community College
KAREN SCHERMERHORN, Faculty Federation of the Community College of Philadelphia
EDWARD SCHONES, United Technical College Educators
SANDRA SCHROEDER, Washington Federation of Teachers
RAYMOND SPOTO, The Association of University of Wisconsin Professionals
LOUIS STOLLAR, United College Employees of the Fashion Institute of Technology
MITCHELL VOGEL, University Professionals of Illinois
NICHOLAS YOVNELLO, Council of New Jersey State College Locals
STAFF:
LAWRENCE N. GOLD, AFT Higher Education Director
CRAIG P. SMITH, AFT Higher Education Assistant Director
BETTE ANN HUBBARD, AFT Higher Education Senior Associate
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Foreword
F
or a number of years, we have been hearing calls for a new, more “efficient” way of
administering our institutions of higher education. It is said that:
■
times have changed;
colleges and universities ought to be run more like businesses;
■ the rapid technological changes taking place—computerization, the Internet, Web-based
courses—require adaptability;
■ the marketplace of higher education is rapidly changing, with wholly online institutions
and for-profit universities creating competitive challenges to our traditional ways;
■ faculty are too slow to make decisions to adapt to change and cling to outmoded models
of deliberation and reflection when action is required;
■ faculty resist efforts to keep the curriculum up to date and inappropriately inject politics—multiculturalism, liberalism—into it; and
■ the tenure system stands as an obstacle to greater accountability and improved performance.
■
Because an ever-growing number of board members and administrators with this mindset
have reached positions of responsibility on campus, a direct assault is being launched on
the practice of shared governance in higher education. There is a feeling among political
leaders, boards of governors (regents or trustees) and top administrators (chancellors, presidents and the like) that any sharing of authority impedes their “right” to make the big decisions. They believe that they know what is best and that faculty and staff should step aside
and let the managers take charge.
The American Federation of Teachers, on the other hand, believes this is exactly the wrong
way to run a successful college or university. We believe that all college and university
employees—top tenured faculty, junior faculty, temporary and part-time/adjunct faculty,
graduate teaching and research assistants, professional staff with and without faculty
rank, the classified and support staff that keep the educational enterprise going—should
have a guaranteed voice in decision-making, a role in shaping policy in the areas of their
expertise. 1
Throughout this
document, terms such as
“faculty,” “professional
staff” and “staff” (which
includes classified and
support staff as well as
professionals) will be
used to refer to the wide
variety of college and
university employees
listed above. The broad
range of job titles,
nomenclature and
ranking systems at each
institution makes it
impossible to use more
specific or uniform
terminology.
1
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The Shared Governance Crisis
What Is Shared Governance? Why Is It Important?
Shared governance is the set of practices under which college faculty and staff participate in
significant decisions concerning the operation of their institutions. Colleges and universities
are very special types of institutions with a unique mission—the creation and dissemination
of ideas. For that reason, they have created particular arrangements to serve that mission
best. For example, academic tenure protects the status, academic freedom and independent
voice of scholars and teachers. Shared governance, in turn, arose out of a recognition that:
■
academic decision-making should be largely independent of short-term managerial and
political considerations;
■ faculty and professional staff are in the best position to shape and implement curriculum
and research policy, to select academic colleagues and judge their work; and
■ the perspective of all front-line personnel is invaluable in making sound decisions about
allocating resources, setting goals, choosing top officers and guiding student life.
It is widely understood that broad participation in decision-making increases the level of
employee investment in the institution’s success. As a result, organizational theorists for
many years have recommended shared decision-making as a key strategy to improve productivity in all kinds of organizations. In higher education, due to the high turnover rate of
top administrators, the faculty and staff are often in the best position to provide the institutional history so valuable to institutional planning. Without that institutional history, institutions are apt to repeat past failures.
Why Is Shared Governance Under Attack?
Until recently, top college administrators, boards of trustees and political leaders could be
counted on to recognize and defend the right of individual faculty and staff members and
their representative assemblies to participate in the design and implementation of the educational goals and policies of the institution. But no longer. Why?
Increasing numbers of public officials, institutional board members and administrators
have come to view higher education as a multi-billion-dollar industry, with money and
power to be amassed and used for purposes remote from core academic values such as contemplation, reflection, neutrality, objectivity and critical thinking. To exploit the commer-
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cial and political potential of this industry, they seek to run our colleges more on a “corporatized” business model. The corporate model is characterized by commercializing and
breaking apart the elements that make higher education great.
The corporatized college president has become the CEO, no longer the academic leader.
The agendas of the top administrators in public colleges often are informed by political considerations, not academic ones. The educational mission is seen as just one aspect of a
multi-faceted “business” in which the institution is engaged, which may include job training, entertainment, sports, housing, health care, and private corporate research and development. Under the guise of efficiency and confidentiality, top administrators are being
recruited by professional search firms with a diminished faculty role in their selection. The
voice of the faculty and staff is relegated to an advisory role rather than that of a full partner
in the institution’s success.
The Real Crisis In Shared Governance
The corporatized model of college governance has engendered a real crisis in higher education. It threatens the integrity of the key educational and research functions that faculty
and staff perform, through:
■
outsourcing jobs essential to instruction, including the design of courses and introduction of computer-based teaching elements;
■ redirecting the teaching of courses from full-time dedicated professionals to exploited
part-time and temporary faculty, graduate teaching and research assistants, with low pay,
little security and no academic freedom;
■ re-orienting the curriculum toward business-oriented coursework, including more
courses designed to “train” students for the “real-world.” Traditionally “academic” courses
are pressured to be more “practical,” and generally there is less concern for a broad-based
liberal arts curriculum intended to help students develop and mature intellectually into critically thinking democratic citizens;
■ buying and selling “courseware,” through the appropriation of computer-based intellectual property for purposes of commercial exploitation;
■ developing for-profit teaching and/or research subsidiaries of colleges and universities,
which are out of the reach of public scrutiny; and
■ forming commercial consortia with other universities and private investors.
Increased workloads, restrictive tenure standards, pressures to incorporate new technologies in teaching and demoralization resulting from top-level assertions of power have had
the predictable, if perverse, effect of decreasing the willingness of faculty and staff to participate in the shared governance of their institutions.
The erosion of shared governance imperils the elements that produce quality education and
scholarship. Shared governance is like the system of checks and balances in state and federal government. Excessive power and control concentrated in any one level of the institu-
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tion virtually guarantees that there will be a distorted perspective on crucial aspects of the
academic enterprise. When politicians, boards and administrators seek to “corporatize”
higher education, they hurt the recipients of educational value, namely students and the
public.
Shared Governance Should Be Strengthened and Expanded
The interdependence among constituent groups at all levels of the college requires complex
coordination, excellent communication among the levels, and appropriate joint planning
and execution. Faculty and administrators depend on a wide variety of specialist co-workers to perform their academic functions. In the increasingly complex world of higher education, many of the traditional duties of those holding faculty rank have been reassigned or
shared with other professionals. For instance, many groups of specialists assist in key ways:
■
■
■
student counselors provide academic and career guidance;
information technologists help enhance teaching, learning and research; and
laboratory managers and assistants maintain and teach scientific work in laboratories.
Part-time/adjunct faculty used to be literally adjunct to the central instructional function,
but they have become indispensable and ubiquitous, though overused and exploited, in
many colleges. Classified and support staff, traditionally not represented at the table, also
deserve representative participation in making decisions related to their areas of expertise.
Employees of all kinds have long sought vehicles for effective voice in workplace decisions,
often through unions and professional associations. In some states and institutions, staff
members without faculty rank have been explicitly included—sometimes mandated by
statute—in representative decision-making and planning committees, task forces and
assemblies. At hundreds of institutions, academic and classified staff have expressed their
right to be heard through engagement in collective bargaining. In still other cases, their
voice is ignored. When their influence is denied a place in policy making, the institution
and its students suffer.
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Six Principles of Shared Governance
T
he following are six basic principles of shared governance that should be observed in
establishing, maintaining and strengthening our institutions.
Faculty and professional staff set academic standards and curriculum
Faculty and professional staff, particularly those directly involved in teaching and conducting
research, should have the lead role in determining the content of the curriculum, degree and
certificate requirements, standards of instruction, student achievement standards, grading,
and all matters relating to student progress in academic programs. To fulfill this responsibility
effectively, faculty and professional staff must be given access to information and resources.
Their judgments should be subject to overrule only rarely, with compelling reasons provided
in writing and with an opportunity for response by the faculty and professional staff.
Faculty and professional staff require academic freedom
Faculty and professional staff must be able to exercise independent academic judgment in
the conduct of their teaching and research. Administrators should not interfere in these
matters except in proven cases of academic incompetence or wrongdoing. A strong tenure
system is the bulwark of protecting academic freedom against intimidation and arbitrary
dismissal. Beyond that, protections of free expression should be extended to all staff to
ensure openness, objectivity and creativity.
Faculty and professional staff should have primacy
in decisions on academic personnel and status
Faculty should have the primary role in interviewing and recommending candidates for academic appointment to the faculty, for tenure and promotion, research support, sabbaticals,
and other incentives and measures of academic quality. Similarly, professional staff should
have the primary role in interviewing and recommending candidates for appointment to their
ranks, for advancement in academic status and promotion and for other incentives and measures of professional quality. Administrative overrule of these decisions should be rare and for
compelling reasons, given in writing, and be subject to individual and collective response.
Participation in shared governance should be expanded
A well-functioning college or university is one that ensures that all faculty and all staff—
from full professors to adjunct lecturers, from librarians to departmental support staff—
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have suitable arrangements for their voices to be heard and given proper weight in decisions that affect the mission and operation of the institution. For example, all faculty and
staff should play a direct and prominent role in developing and advising on institutional
budgets. All faculty and staff should have a leading role on institutional committees, task
forces and decision-making bodies that affect their work and are within their areas of
expertise, including search committees for choosing presidents and administrators.
Given the growing interdependence among faculty, staff, students, administrators and institutional boards, all of those who aid in the design and/or implementation of the academic
mission of the college or university have a stake in shared governance. While full-time faculty have traditionally been able to claim a central role along with top administrators and
boards, a number of trends, accelerating since the last quarter of the twentieth century,
favor the expansion of governance roles to other staff. For instance, the increased specialization of traditional academic functions, away from active faculty involvement and toward
professional and technical personnel, necessitates the inclusion of these experts into appropriate roles in shared governance. Similarly, the enlargement of the role of non-tenure-track
and part-time/adjunct faculty, as well as of graduate employees (teaching and research
assistants) calls for the development of appropriate means and mechanisms to draw them
into shared governance.
The forms of shared governance and degrees of participation will vary according to the particular institutional arrangements currently in place, but each group whose work contributes to the academic enterprise should be involved in a manner appropriate to its institutional function and responsibilities.
Unions, representative assemblies and faculty senates
all can have significant roles in shared governance
The organizational forms of shared governance differ among institutions, depending on
institutional history, norms and customs. In many institutions, these forms are called senates or assemblies, though these terms are not definitive, for faculty senates may include or
exclude administrators, non-teaching professionals, non-tenure-track and part-time faculty.
In many colleges and universities, faculty and staff have turned to collective bargaining, both
as a way to increase the influence of their voices, to provide institutional means for their
voices to be heard and represented in the absence of pre-existing roles for them in shared governance, or to support and bolster the existing structures of shared governance. Unionization
is a basic democratic right of all employees. Higher education unions are democratically
elected representatives of these employees with a legitimate role in shared governance.
A standard management tactic, however, is to attempt to convince faculty and staff—especially during campaigns to establish collective bargaining—that the existence of a faculty or
staff union will destroy the “collegiality” of the shared governance process. In particular, the
argument goes, the union will take over the powers and responsibilities of the faculty senate
or whatever the governance body is called.
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The position of the American Federation of Teachers has always been that the functions
of the union and the governance bodies complement, rather than compete with, each
other. Despite predictions by opponents of unionization that the presence of a faculty or
staff union would destroy the shared governance body and shatter collegiality, this observation is unfounded. In fact, the opposite is often true.
Unions and collective bargaining do not and should not supplant effective structures of
shared governance, i.e., those structures that derive their legitimacy from genuine representation of faculty and staff. When faculty and staff choose unions and collective bargaining,
they do so because a clear majority believe that the existing structure is not sufficient to
guarantee full and true collegiality—the kind that comes from working with top administrators and board members as equal partners on the basis of legally enforceable rights and
responsibilities.
Specifically, collective bargaining strengthens collegiality by establishing and enforcing
contractual ground rules supporting it. Typically, committee procedures developed in the
institution’s shared governance traditions have been incorporated into union contracts,
strengthening the senate’s (or other body’s) role and preserving collegial practices. One can
think of it in the following way: the union itself is one form of shared governance, but one that
is able to create the conditions under which other shared governance mechanisms like the
faculty senate can operate successfully and without administrative interference. In the end,
we believe that the strongest shared governance systems are based on sound collective bargaining contracts that clearly delineate an active role for faculty and staff at the institution.
On a college-by-college basis, it is important that the respective roles of the union and the
shared governance structures be understood mutually. There is no one template for shared
governance for all institutions of higher education, nor should there be. Differences among
colleges will be based, among other things, on the federal, state and local legal mandates
governing particular colleges and universities, on the requirements of applicable labor laws,
on institutional traditions, on the terms of the collective bargaining agreement and on the
institution’s circumstances of labor-management relations.
Accrediting agencies should support fully the concept
of shared governance in their standards
Regional and specialized accrediting agencies, whose role it is to establish standards for
higher education institutions, should guarantee that enforceable shared governance procedures are not only included in written institutional policies, but also are practiced in reality.
For instance, as institutions shift more course work into a distance education medium,
accrediting agencies should ensure that faculty and staff remain as deeply involved in setting curriculum and academic standards as they are in traditional courses and that their
teaching continues to be protected by academic freedom.
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Conclusion
I
n whatever shared governance structures exist or are created, faculty and staff must have
representatives of their own choosing. They must respect the rights of other participants in
shared governance.
Institutional structures of shared governance should be constructed to incorporate the
views of faculty and staff at all levels of decision-making. The institution’s administrators
must provide the participants in shared governance time, encouragement and the information necessary to be effective.
Shared governance is vital to maintain the academic integrity of our colleges and universities, to prevent the pressures of commercialization from distorting the institution’s educational mission or eroding standards and quality, and to uphold the ideals of academic freedom and democratic practice. Strengthening shared governance is the responsibility of all
colleges and universities, and a priority of our union.
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